An English diwan

Salar Jung I

The making of most cities cannot be credited to one individual alone. But, if writer-bureaucrat Bakhtiar K Dadabhoy is to be believed, the story of modern Hyderabad, the land of the erstwhile Nizams, was first scripted by Mir Turab Ali Khan Salar Jung (1829-1883), known otherwise as Salar Jung I, who served as diwan of the state for three decades. "It was Salar Jung who, by his reforms of the medieval oligarchy that was Hyderabad, ushered the state into the modern era. The idea of an organised system of government in Hyderabad owed its birth to his vision. Before him, there was no concept of a regular and systematic form of government with separate departments and secretariats. He established courts and reorganised the police. He overhauled the land revenue system, built roads and tanks and created or renewed irrigation works. He founded educational institutions and introduced the railways. His labours brought the Nizam's government from a condition of organised brigandage to one of the most enlightened in India," he says, in an email interview.

For Dadabhoy, who has previously penned the biographies of the illustrious conductor Zubin Mehta and entrepreneur JRD Tata, this was sufficient material to honour Salar Jung's memory. "I confess I knew nothing about him till I started doing research for an article that I contributed to an anthology on Hyderabad about 10 years ago," says Dadabhoy, who spent his early years in Secunderabad. Like many, the writer admits to have associated the name Salar Jung with a museum in Hyderabad, which houses the collection of his grandson Salar Jung III. The article enabled him to see the diwan in different light. Over four years ago, Dadabhoy's curiosity got the better of him, and he began work on researching Salar Jung's life story, resulting in a new book, The Magnificent Diwan (Penguin India).

Writer Bakhtiar K Dadabhoy currently works as principal chief commercial manager, Central Railway

The 550-page tome takes us through Salar Jung's personal and political history, and how that influenced his administrative efforts. That he was forward-thinking, and influenced greatly by Western thought and values, made him a great friend of the British. "He had an enviable command over English and an intimate acquaintance with English ideas, thanks to his association with the family of the British Resident, General Fraser. He was contemptuously called 'firangi baccha' by the Nizam. His daughters had a French governess and he was the first Muslim nobleman in India to educate his daughters in a manner which Europeans would consider a proper young women's education," says Dadabhoy. Having said that, Salar Jung was also very much rooted in tradition. "He was a man of many contradictions and dichotomies...though he was very comfortable in European society he never ceased to be Indian. He stubbornly fought to preserve the old Mughlai ways and to preserve old customs."

If there was a blot in his career, it came with his ferocious obsession to restore the province of Berar, which had been given away to the British. "Berar was important to the Nizams and to Salar Jung for both pragmatic and sentimental reasons. It was the most fertile part of the state and famous for its cotton cultivation.

At the time, two acts were considered disgraceful for a ruler - the ceding of territory and the disbanding of troops. So, this particular humiliation rankled and Salar Jung was often taunted by the Nizam since it was when his uncle Siraj-ul-Mulk was diwan that Berar was assigned to the British. It was a stain on the family name which Salar Jung was keen to obliterate," says Dadahboy. In the book, the writer describes how Jung took to "devious and secretive measures to press for the restoration of Berar". He ended up falsifying the accounts to the extent of R41 lakh. The nizam, however, granted him pardon after his death. It was, as Dadabhoy says, his way of saying that "whatever Salar Jung had done was for the good of Hyderabad".

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